We Are What We Eat: What Can I Do? (5)

This is the continuation of a series in response to the question, “What can I do about climate change?” Links to the previous entries are listed at the end.

Last week I made a list of categories to classify the types of actions that we can take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The second item on that list is food. But first, I want to start with some more sets of categories.

When we think of fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas come to forefront. We often think of coal as dirty and natural gas as clean, in terms of air quality, climate change and general environmental damage. All of these forms of fossil fuels emit carbon dioxide when they burn, and that carbon dioxide is for practical human time in either the atmosphere or ocean permanently. Therefore we can’t simply replace coal and oil with natural gas and declare that we will avoid global warming.

If we examine how we use energy, then those uses can be divided into three categories: power generation, transportation and direct use for heat. For the past few decades, coal has dominated power generation and petroleum has dominated transportation. All three contribute to direct use for heat. Recently in the U.S., natural gas has been replacing coal for power generation, but worldwide, coal is still the dominant fuel (natural gas and coal, TON, NPR). Oil dominates transportation.

Taking another cut through our energy use, we can categorize use as residential, commercial, industrial and for transportation. Industrial uses create products from raw materials: manufacturing, cement making, mining and agriculture. Commercial uses include shops, government buildings and where governments spend money. Residential and commercial uses include a large part of electricity, heating and cooling of buildings, and heating of water. An interesting point: next to the burning of fossil fuels, cement making is the largest nonagricultural source of carbon dioxide emissions. It’s on the order of 5 percent.

If we return to the question of “What Can I Do?,” then the items discussed in the previous entries on efficiency focus primarily on the better management of buildings (residential and commercial) as well as on +choices in transportation. In fact, an alternative way to categorize use is for buildings, transportation and industry. If one were to think about government regulation, then emissions from coal-fired power plants are relatively easy to target because there are not that many power plants and they don’t move around. Transportation is harder to regulate because there are, globally, billions of cars and trucks and they do move around. The different categories I have described demonstrate both the easy opportunity for regulation, power generation, and the challenges of climate policy – that there is no single thing to fix the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.

Now to food – If we were to make a special food and agriculture category, then agriculture is responsible for about the same amount of emissions as, say, transportation or heating. Now, however, we have to become more holistic about what we mean by emissions. For agriculture, we have carbon dioxide emissions, which come mostly from deforestation. Cutting and burning forests to make new rangeland for cattle make up about 10 percent of the total annual carbon dioxide emissions. There is some emission from the use of fossil fuels for tractors and irrigation, and about half of the agricultural carbon dioxide fossil fuel emissions come from the manufacture of fertilizer. There are also other land use and soil management decisions made in agriculture that affect carbon dioxide emissions.

Beyond carbon dioxide, agriculture is responsible for about a third of methane emissions and close to two-thirds of the nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. These are greenhouse gases that are more potent than carbon dioxide; they are in much lower concentrations in the atmosphere.

So, what we eat can make a difference. When I was in college in the 1970s, I was introduced to Frances Moore Lappe’s book, Diet for a Small Planet. What I remember from that book was that if you took all of the calories needed to grow a pound of beef and instead feed those grains to people, you could feed many more people than you could with a pound of beef. It was my first introduction to sustainability. It takes much land and energy to make the well-marbled porterhouses that my father fed me in one-pound servings. No matter how you count, livestock production, in particular, beef production, releases a lot of greenhouse gases.

There are many marketing appeals in food and food supply. These appeals are to make personal decisions that affect the world, and individual choices the public makes about food and food supply do affect the world. We have appeals to buy grass-fed beef, organic meat and produce, locally produced and sustainable agriculture. We are faced with issues of packaging, preprocessing, natural, raw and prepared. There are no easy algorithms. In February, an apple from Chile might take less energy in transportation than an apple from Virginia takes in cold storage. We demand fresh fruit, vegetables and meat all winter. We demand exotic spices, fine coffee, tea and chocolate. The global demand for meat and nonlocal food increases as the world’s wealth increases.

So what rules of food selection matter? My personal evaluation is that reducing meat consumption is at the top of the list, and at the top of the meat list is beef. Pasture-raised might be better than feedlot, but life cycle studies show that beef is a relatively inefficient use of energy. Chicken is far more energy-efficient. Should we choose sustainable, local or organic meat and produce? From an emissions point of view, I hear sustainable advocated as best if there are actual standards and certification of sustainability--then local, then organic. I have made the controversial claim that since our current practice of organic, local and sustainable agriculture demands high payment for produce and meat, and since most of our generation of money requires high fossil fuel energy use, there is a hidden cost to the climate that comes from high-value crops.

It’s not easy, but what we eat does make a difference to the environment. We usually think of this difference in terms of pesticides, herbicides and erosion, but there is also a climate impact. And as is often the case, the connection is indirect, far in the future and difficult to know how to value.

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Note: The source of much of the material in this entry is based on Livestock’s Long Shadow a 2006 publication of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. There has been much criticism of this report, especially in its calculation of the emissions of the transportation sector. The original authors did modify their specific statements about transportation. As noted in the next blog in this series, there is substantial controversy about the impact of agriculture. My evaluation is that the agriculture numbers in this report are as robust as any I know. My opinion would be that the agriculture emissions in this report are more likely an underestimate than an overestimate. As for comparisons to other sources of emissions, when fossil fuel emissions are broken down as described in this blog, the different sectors, residential, commercial, transportation and industrial, are all large and no single one is dominant. Therefore, the conclusion that agriculture is comparable to these sectors seems reasonable.

Previous Entries in the Series

Setting Up the Discussion Deciding to do something, definition of mitigation and adaptation, and a cost-benefit anchored framework for thinking about mitigation

Moderation of comments: I have been getting more and more complaints about what is going on in the comments. WU and I will be addressing this. To start, here is a modified version of Dr. Master’s Blog Contents Rules.

Rood's Rules of the Road

1. Please do not carry on personal disputes.2. Keep it civil. Personal attacks, bickering, flaming and general trollish behavior will not be tolerated. Disagreements are fine, but keep them civil.3. No spam.4. Stay on the topic of climate change or the entry topic. 5. Foul language is not allowed.6. Please avoid topics that would be considered adults only. Many children come to this site looking for information.7. Threats and intimidation, especially that which extends into the real world will be dealt with accordingly.8. Do not circumvent a ban. Most bans last 24 hours or less; please accept the ban. If you create a new username to circumvent a ban, you will be blocked from the site completely.

Emergency officials were letting a fire from an oil tank explosion near Denham Springs continue to burn down Friday morning, several hours after it began at about 10:30 p.m. Thursday night.

Residents were still evacuated from their homes and officials said they would be allowed to return when the fire was out. Livingston Parish President Layton Ricks said in a text message that the fire is expected to burn until about 11 a.m. or noon.

The explosion was near Linder and Arnold Roads, in an area with two oil tanks with combined capacity of 2,300 gallons. One of the tanks ruptured and exploded, said Mark Harrell, director of the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness in Livingston Parish, on Thursday night.

About 30 to 35 homes were evacuated. No injuries were reported from the blast.

Fire crews planned to put foam on the fire once it burned down further Friday morning, according to the Facebook page of the Louisiana Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Emergency Climate Meeting: White House Officials Told Arctic Ocean Could Be Ice-Free Within Two Years

This week, a number of top scientists, experts, DoD and Homeland Security Department notables are convening an emergency meeting warning White House officials that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free during summertime within two years.

This A-Team (A for Arctic) includes NASA’s chief scientist Gale Allen, National Science Foundation Director Cora Marett, Director of the Oceans Institute of the University of Western Australia marine scientist Prof Carlos Duarte, and nine other top Arctic specialists together with key representatives from the US Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon.

The Washington meeting is the second major climate emergency meeting of its kind to occur within the past month. Just a few weeks ago, the UK held its own climate meeting in response to severe and unprecedented weather occurring throughout Europe this winter and spring.

Scientists and specialists descending on the White House are now echoing increasingly urgent warnings coming from Arctic experts such as Peter Wadhams and Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski that the Arctic Ocean could be essentially ice free by 2016 plus or minus three years. Trends analysis confirms these scientists’ predictions showing that current average volume melt rates put the Arctic in an ice-free state sometime around 2016. Even worse, an outlier melt year similar to 2007 or 2010 would result in ice-free conditions this year (2013) or in any year following. The result is that the two year warning, in the extreme worst case, could be too late.

We are in the zone of Maslowki’s melt. So any year from now to 2019, according to observed melt trends, could result in ice-free conditions at end of summer.

One of the current set of White House advisors, Prof Carlos Duarte, warned in early April that the ice was melting far faster than predicted and the Arctic could see ice free ocean conditions during summer by 2015. According to reports from The Guardian, Duarte noted:

“The Arctic situation is snowballing: dangerous changes in the Arctic derived from accumulated anthropogenic greenhouse gases lead to more activities conducive to further greenhouse gas emissions. This situation has the momentum of a runaway train.”

Duarte is also the lead author of a paper examining Arctic tipping points and how they are rapidly being passed, resulting in an ever-increasing polar warming. The three primary drivers of these changes include loss of ice reflectivity or albedo, increased release of greenhouse gasses from the Arctic geography and oceans as they warm, and increased release of biologically generated greenhouse gasses as new micro-organisms are able to enter the Arctic environment.

Duarte’s observations are similar to those of other scientists who have warned of amplifying feedbacks in the Arctic. Just last year, NOAA issued a warning that a number of key tipping points had been reached and would result in jarring changes to climates and weather around the globe. In 2011, a group of Russian and US scientists observed massive releases of climate change enhancing methane from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. NASA scientist James Hansen warned of the potential for a powerful Arctic methane release as a result of human forcing in his 2008 book “Storms of My Grandchildren.” And in 2012, NSIDC issued a paper showing that methane release from tundra could amplify human-caused global warming by an additions .4 to 1.5 degrees.

It was the sum total of these warnings and observations that lead to the formation by a group of scientists of the Arctic Methane Emergency Group (AMEG). AMEG is headed by Peter Wadhams, a noted polar researcher, and is composed of a number of scientists very concerned that Arctic conditions could rapidly deteriorate as an amplifying pulse of methane emerges.

A simple explanation of these system changes can be found here.

Among other things, AMEG is very concerned about the implications of Arctic sea ice melt and methane release for global food security. According to AMEG:

“The weather extremes from last year are causing real problems for farmers, not only in the UK, but in the US and many grain-producing countries. World food production can be expected to decline, with mass starvation inevitable. The price of food will rise inexorably, producing global unrest and making food security even more of an issue.”

AMEG’s observations are consistent with the biology inherent to many grains used for food. These grains evolved in conditions over the past 5 million years or so that required large ice sheets to stabilize the climate. Alterations to weather patterns causing extremes outside of these food crops biological thresholds put them at risk. And the current loss of sea ice is just beginning to kick off such unpredictable and difficult to adapt to extremes.

The sum total of this growing list of scientific observation is that warming and, therefore, sea ice loss in the Arctic kicking into very high gear results in serious and severe consequences.

A Catastrophic Decline

Overall, the Arctic has lost 80% of its sea ice by volume since 1979 and the rate of losses over the past ten years has been accelerating. In addition, strange and dangerous events are cropping up with increasing frequency. The polar jet stream is mangled — a result Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers attributes to loss of Arctic sea ice.

According to Francis:

“The loss of Arctic summer sea ice and the rapid warming of the Far North are altering the jet stream over North America, Europe, and Russia. Scientists are now just beginning to understand how these profound shifts may be increasing the likelihood of more persistent and extreme weather.”

In addition, this winter hosted a freakish and massive sea ice breakup throughout the Beaufort Sea during February and March, two of the Arctic’s coldest months. To say that such an event was unprecedented is almost an understatement. Never before had such a large cracking event been observed during winter. The event was kicked off by strong winds blowing over the Beaufort sea ice. The ice was so thin it couldn’t retain integrity and broke in a spectacular and disturbing series of massive cracks.

You can view this break-up sequence in the below series of images provided by NASA:

A wide and varying range of events can now be shown to have been amplified and worsened by Arctic sea ice loss. These include last year’s drought, 2011′s flooding, the Texas drought of 2011, Hurricane Sandy, this year’s extreme European winter, massive outbreaks of wildfires in the northern hemisphere since 2006, and record summer heatwaves and floods occurring throughout the northern hemisphere over the same period. It is the fact that these blocking pattern generated extreme weather events are now clearly linked to sea ice loss, that constitutes an ongoing and worsening weather emergency.

This past February, the US Department of Defense issued its own concerns. In its Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, the DOD warned of:

“… significant geopolitical impacts around the world, contributing to greater competition for more limited and critical life-sustaining resources like food and water.”

… and that the impacts of climate change could:

“Act as accelerants of instability or conflict in parts of the world… [and] may also lead to increased demands for defense support to civil authorities for humanitarian assistance or disaster response, both within the United States and overseas … DoD will need to adjust to the impacts of climate change on its facilities, infrastructure, training and testing activities, and military capabilities.”

Cause for Serious Response

Now, as this summer’s melt season proceeds, many scientists are increasingly concerned that ice free conditions will appear this summer, next summer, or sometime before 2020. As noted above, such events will have very serious implications for world-wide climate and food security. And it is these results that the White House is in serious need of addressing. Given such a context, one would hope that US government officials take the clear warnings given by scientists and members of the defense community and begin the policy responses needed to start reigning in human greenhouse gas emissions. It is high time such efforts began. And we are in serious and urgent need that they ramp up rapidly.

According to Duarte, “We are facing the first clear evidence of dangerous climate change.” From here on, things only grow worse.

Keeling is the son of Charles David Keeling, who began the CO2 observations at Mauna Loa in 1958 and for whom the iconic Keeling Curve is named.

Carbon dioxide is the most important long-lived global warming gas, and once it is emitted by burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil, a single CO2 molecule can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Global CO2 emissions reached a record high of 35.6 billion tonnes in 2012, up 2.6 percent from 2011. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases warm the planet by absorbing the suns energy and preventing heat from escaping back into space.

The last time there was this much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere, modern humans didn't exist. Mega-toothed sharks prowled the oceans, the world's seas were up to 100 feet higher than they are today, and the global average surface temperature was up to 11F warmer than it is now.

As we near the record for the highest CO2 concentration in human history 400 parts per million climate scientists worry about where we were then, and where we're rapidly headed now.

According to data gathered at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, the 400 ppm mark may briefly be exceeded this month, when CO2 typically hits a seasonal peak in the Northern Hemisphere, although it is more likely to take a couple more years until it stays above that threshold, according to Ralph Keeling, a researcher at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

Global warming warnings were debated in President Richard Nixon's administration as early as 1969, according to newly released documents examined by The Orange County Register.

The 100,000 pages of presidential records made available by the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum on Friday also portray former Nixon's inner circle as being out of touch with the American people and their sentiments against the Vietnam War.

Most of the archived documents released Friday came from the files of Nixon's Democratic adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Moynihan wrote in a September 1969 memo that it was "pretty clearly agreed" that carbon dioxide content would rise 25 percent by 2000...

The same party that now wants it abolished and proclaims it big government. You've brought this up before and it's a silly argument. Nixon wouldn't even come close to winning a primary in today's republican party, especially with ideas like the EPA.

Peru says no to GMOPeru is the first country in the Americas to ban genetically modified foods, putting its food policy closer to that of Europe, than the United States or many of its South American neighbors.

There isn’t much local Chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino won’t eat. His highly accliamed Amaz restaurant is devoted to finding and using Amazonian food native to the country, like a 600-pound freshwater fish or a little-known fruit nicknamed “cannonball” that tastes like a cross between a guava, coconut, and melon.

But a year ago Mr. Schiaffino stopped eating supermarket tomatoes.

Even though Peru is the birthplace of the crop, it’s difficult to find anything other than hard, pale Roma tomatoes in supermarkets, and Schiaffino says that worried him.

“They’re a big monoculture, which is why people usually end up using [genetically modified organisms] GMOs. Because when you have monocultures, the crops end up getting diseases, and you have to look for these extreme ways to fix them,” he says.

Peru was the cradle of the Inca Empire, and today it’s home to many crops indigenous to the Americas. It has 400 varieties of potato alone, and a geography that allows farmers to grow almost anything.

It's also the only country in the Americas to put a 10-year ban on genetically modified food, with a law that was first introduced in 2011, and went into effect at the end of last year. Its basic intention, say Schiaffino and others, is to protect Peru’s biodiversity, as well as the practices that have kept it intact for so long.

“In the end, it’s not a law that’s ‘against’ anything,” says Antonietta Gutierrez, a biologist at Peru’s National Agrarian University. “This is a law in favor of biosecurity. The idea is that there should be a responsible way of using technology, so that it helps us develop resources – and at the same time, doesn’t destroy what we already have."

"As the Arctic ocean becomes more and more ice free, the ocean absorbs more of the incident energy from the sun. The Arctic ocean becomes warmer than the former ice cover and much more water vapour enters the air. At times when the adjacent land is colder than the sea, this causes rising air above the sea and an off-shore wind as air over the land comes in to replace the rising air over the sea. As the air rises, the dew point is reached and clouds form, releasing latent heat and further reinforcing the buoyancy of the air over the ocean.

All this results in air being drawn from the south across the tundra rather than the present situation of cold air flowing toward the south from the cold sinking air over the Arctic ocean. The extra heat being drawn from the south further accelerates the warming of the permafrost and the Arctic ocean with increased release of methane"

How Far and Fast Can a Denier Fall? Roy Spencer gave an interview recently, which Dana critiqued very well on SkepticalScience. Roy should know better than to try to hoodwink people.

It seems the poor old chap has no-one left to defend him except Lord Monckton, in an article on Anthony Watts' anti-science blog, WUWT.

One of Monkton's first defenses of Spencer is that:

The satellites reveal the inconvenient truth that there has been no global warming for approaching two decades."Approaching two decades"? Approaching from how far away I wonder. Monckton needs new glasses. Here is what the satellite reveals, using the record from UAH as measured by the self same Spencer that Monckton is 'defending':

Do we need to go any further? I mean if Monckton gets it so wrong from the start...

Alright, just to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he had a brief seniors moment. Let's see what he says next. Nah, we'll skip the next three paragraphs, which are nothing but insults leveled at John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli and see what he says after that:

Nuccitelli begins by condemning Roy Spencer for saying, “No one knows whether it is currently warming, because we only see warming in the rear-view mirror, after it has occurred.” This truism is characteristic of Roy, who gently nudges the language of climate science in the direction of greater rigor. One cannot measure that it is warming, only that it has warmed.

Yet Nuccitelli, in a fine illustration of that blind faith that TH Huxley denounced in 1860 as “the one unpardonable sin”, asserts that “We absolutely do know that the planet is currently warming”.I guess if Spencer and Monckton were dropping out of the sky they'd comfort each other by gently nudging the language of physical science in the direction of greater rigour, saying: "Don't panic! No-one knows whether we're currently falling, because we only see us falling in the rear view mirror, after it has occurred."

To paraphrase Monckton some more:

One cannot measure that we are falling, only that we have fallen! Oh! And how the 'mighty' have fallen!

How Far and Fast Can a Denier Fall? Roy Spencer gave an interview recently, which Dana critiqued very well on SkepticalScience. Roy should know better than to try to hoodwink people.

It seems the poor old chap has no-one left to defend him except Lord Monckton, in an article on Anthony Watts' anti-science blog, WUWT.

One of Monkton's first defenses of Spencer is that:

The satellites reveal the inconvenient truth that there has been no global warming for approaching two decades."Approaching two decades"? Approaching from how far away I wonder. Monckton needs new glasses. Here is what the satellite reveals, using the record from UAH as measured by the self same Spencer that Monckton is 'defending':

Do we need to go any further? I mean if Monckton gets it so wrong from the start...

Alright, just to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he had a brief seniors moment. Let's see what he says next. Nah, we'll skip the next three paragraphs, which are nothing but insults leveled at John Cook and Dana Nuccitelli and see what he says after that:

Nuccitelli begins by condemning Roy Spencer for saying, “No one knows whether it is currently warming, because we only see warming in the rear-view mirror, after it has occurred.” This truism is characteristic of Roy, who gently nudges the language of climate science in the direction of greater rigor. One cannot measure that it is warming, only that it has warmed.

Yet Nuccitelli, in a fine illustration of that blind faith that TH Huxley denounced in 1860 as “the one unpardonable sin”, asserts that “We absolutely do know that the planet is currently warming”.I guess if Spencer and Monckton were dropping out of the sky they'd comfort each other by gently nudging the language of physical science in the direction of greater rigour, saying: "Don't panic! No-one knows whether we're currently falling, because we only see us falling in the rear view mirror, after it has occurred."

To paraphrase Monckton some more:

One cannot measure that we are falling, only that we have fallen! Oh! And how the 'mighty' have fallen!

Quoting iceagecoming:Posted: Wednesday, May 1, 2013 2:15 am | Updated: 1:11 pm, Wed May 1, 2013.Tim Mowry/tmowry@newsminer.com | 0 commentsFAIRBANKS %u2014 Consider it Mother Nature%u2019s encore in The Winter That Won%u2019t End.Winter continued with a flourish Tuesday in Alaska%u2019s second-largest city as anywhere from 2 to 4 inches of snow fell overnight in and around Fairbanks, continuing what has been one of the coldest, snowiest springs on record.The snowstorm came on the heels of record-cold temperatures last weekend and reinforced what many Fairbanksans feared heading into May %u2014 that spring is nowhere in sight and may never get here.%u201CSkip golf and go directly to hockey,%u201D said meteorologist Bob Fischer at the National Weather Service in Fairbanks.With an average monthly temperature about 15 degrees below normal, April 2013 already was slated to go down as one of the three coldest Aprils on record in Fairbanks, and the new snow will make it one of the 10 snowiest since the weather service began keeping records in 1904.

30TH APRIL 2013 - 19:57This will be the coldest March-May Spring since 1996 (possibly since 1986 or even 1979). Yet we could still get some fine spring-like weather during May, even if that is the case. Winter only relaxed its grip around 12 April:http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/datasets/T mean/date/UK.txt

9:51 a.m. MDT Wednesday: David Mayhew took this picture of 9 inches of snow piling up in Fort Collins:

Posted April 12, 2013After the longest day %u2014 six months of continuous daylight %u2014 the sun has finally set and has cast the South Pole Station in dusk.

The official equinox was two minutes after midnight on Thursday, March 21, though we saw beautiful sunset colors through Monday, March 25, before the clouds rolled in.

This is a special time of year, and the last time we will see the sun until the southern vernal equinox in September. We celebrated the occasion with a special dinner on Saturday, March 23. A telescope in the station dining hall, or galley, provided some great views and allowed some shots of the green flash.

The South Pole Telescope is back lit by the setting sun.We are now in a period of civil twilight %u2014 a couple of stars have popped into view %u2014 and it%u2019s getting darker every day. Temperatures dropped in early March, reaching a serious low of minus 91.1 degrees Fahrenheit on March 25.

"Then, this cold front really stalled out over central Iowa and it just kept snowing and snowing. It just didn't really stop in some places."

The National Weather Service has issued winter storm warnings from southeast Minnesota to northwest Wisconsin and weather advisories for eastern Colorado and the upper Midwest that will continue throughout Thursday.

Total snow accumulation was expected to be 10 to 20 inches in the Rockies with up to 6 inches in the Denver area, the National Weather Service said. Between 2 and 6 inches of snow was predicted for parts of the central plains and the upper Midwest.

Trace amounts of snow in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma were reported on Thursday morning, but there was little accumulation because the ground was too warm, said Tabatha Seymore, observing program leader at the National Weather Service in Amarillo.

Funny how they stuff this story in the business section, main stream media out of control? Or in the the tank for ::::

WOW with all that record cold you would think we would have record mass up in the North Arctic... But, we don't do we iceagecoming? Instead,we have record low mass... Why you think that is iceagecoming?

Posted: Wednesday, May 1, 2013 2:15 am | Updated: 1:11 pm, Wed May 1, 2013.Tim Mowry/tmowry@newsminer.com | 0 commentsFAIRBANKS — Consider it Mother Nature’s encore in The Winter That Won’t End.Winter continued with a flourish Tuesday in Alaska’s second-largest city as anywhere from 2 to 4 inches of snow fell overnight in and around Fairbanks, continuing what has been one of the coldest, snowiest springs on record.The snowstorm came on the heels of record-cold temperatures last weekend and reinforced what many Fairbanksans feared heading into May — that spring is nowhere in sight and may never get here.“Skip golf and go directly to hockey,” said meteorologist Bob Fischer at the National Weather Service in Fairbanks.With an average monthly temperature about 15 degrees below normal, April 2013 already was slated to go down as one of the three coldest Aprils on record in Fairbanks, and the new snow will make it one of the 10 snowiest since the weather service began keeping records in 1904.

30TH APRIL 2013 - 19:57This will be the coldest March-May Spring since 1996 (possibly since 1986 or even 1979). Yet we could still get some fine spring-like weather during May, even if that is the case. Winter only relaxed its grip around 12 April:http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/datasets/T mean/date/UK.txt

9:51 a.m. MDT Wednesday: David Mayhew took this picture of 9 inches of snow piling up in Fort Collins:

Posted April 12, 2013After the longest day — six months of continuous daylight — the sun has finally set and has cast the South Pole Station in dusk.

The official equinox was two minutes after midnight on Thursday, March 21, though we saw beautiful sunset colors through Monday, March 25, before the clouds rolled in.

This is a special time of year, and the last time we will see the sun until the southern vernal equinox in September. We celebrated the occasion with a special dinner on Saturday, March 23. A telescope in the station dining hall, or galley, provided some great views and allowed some shots of the green flash.

The South Pole Telescope is back lit by the setting sun.We are now in a period of civil twilight — a couple of stars have popped into view — and it’s getting darker every day. Temperatures dropped in early March, reaching a serious low of minus 91.1 degrees Fahrenheit on March 25.

"Then, this cold front really stalled out over central Iowa and it just kept snowing and snowing. It just didn't really stop in some places."

The National Weather Service has issued winter storm warnings from southeast Minnesota to northwest Wisconsin and weather advisories for eastern Colorado and the upper Midwest that will continue throughout Thursday.

Total snow accumulation was expected to be 10 to 20 inches in the Rockies with up to 6 inches in the Denver area, the National Weather Service said. Between 2 and 6 inches of snow was predicted for parts of the central plains and the upper Midwest.

Trace amounts of snow in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma were reported on Thursday morning, but there was little accumulation because the ground was too warm, said Tabatha Seymore, observing program leader at the National Weather Service in Amarillo.

The ALEC-sponsored bill to gut North Carolina%u2019s clean energy standard failed last week in one House committee. But as the Charlotte Observer reports, last night it passed a Senate committee over shouted objections to do something most people take for granted in a democracy %u2014 counting votes to see which side has more.

Over the objections of Democratic lawmakers, a Senate committee approved legislation Wednesday to end the state%u2019s 6-year-old renewable energy program.

Opponents of the bill shouted %u201CNo!%u201D when voting to show their frustration at Republican Chairman Bill Rabon%u2019s refusal to count votes with a show of hands. In what was clearly a razor-thin margin, both sides said they would have won if the votes had been counted.

At least a half-dozen Republicans voted with Democrats against the controversial bill Wednesday.

Who opposed it? Mostly radical conservative groups like the Heartland Institute, the Koch Brothers, ALEC, Art Pope, the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, and their friends in the North Carolina State Legislature.

Gutting laws that have wide support and economically benefit the whole state becomes easier when you can do it just because you say so, and don%u2019t have to worry about counting votes.

I told you it would take a few millennium to wait on the politicians.. Now what is your solution?

The ALEC-sponsored bill to gut North Carolina’s clean energy standard failed last week in one House committee. But as the Charlotte Observer reports, last night it passed a Senate committee over shouted objections to do something most people take for granted in a democracy — counting votes to see which side has more.

Over the objections of Democratic lawmakers, a Senate committee approved legislation Wednesday to end the state’s 6-year-old renewable energy program.

Opponents of the bill shouted “No!” when voting to show their frustration at Republican Chairman Bill Rabon’s refusal to count votes with a show of hands. In what was clearly a razor-thin margin, both sides said they would have won if the votes had been counted.

At least a half-dozen Republicans voted with Democrats against the controversial bill Wednesday.

Who opposed it? Mostly radical conservative groups like the Heartland Institute, the Koch Brothers, ALEC, Art Pope, the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, and their friends in the North Carolina State Legislature.

Gutting laws that have wide support and economically benefit the whole state becomes easier when you can do it just because you say so, and don’t have to worry about counting votes.

So wait, what you're now saying is that global warming is real, but it would cost us less to just adapt? You need to make up your mind, your arguments are all over the place. This quote just makes me laugh, "If we can successfully help the general public to understand the futility of 'stopping' climate change and the relative value of adapting, then we can stop wasting money on useless schemes and start putting our money where it will ACTUALLY make a difference." yes, of course, let's put our money in their hands, where it will make quite the difference in their wallets. This is just embarrassing.

ooooooh, look at the experts they've put together! Naga, how can you be so cynical? ;-)

"Expert Interviews. So far we have 7 confirmed interviewees, Former President Vaclav Klaus, Prof Henry Ergas, Prof Fred Singer, Anthony Watts, Prof David Evans, Christopher Essex, and Joanne Nova . Whilst excerpts of the interviews will be used in the 7 minute video, the real value is that we will be spending 30 minutes to 1 hour with each of them (so 3.5+ hours combined run time!) and the full interview with each of these internationally respected experts will be available on the 50-to-1 website as they share their thoughts and perspectives on climate change and in particular policy responses such as carbon taxes and trading schemes."

So wait, what you're now saying is that global warming is real, but it would cost us less to just adapt? You need to make up your mind, your arguments are all over the place. This quote just makes me laugh, "If we can successfully help the general public to understand the futility of 'stopping' climate change and the relative value of adapting, then we can stop wasting money on useless schemes and start putting our money where it will ACTUALLY make a difference." yes, of course, let's put our money in their hands, where it will make quite the difference in their wallets. This is just embarrassing.

CEeastwood's link leads to this statement:"The original calculations were done by Lord Christopher Monckton"

Christopher Walter Monckton, the third Viscount Monckton of Brenchely, is a British politician affiliated with the UK Independence Party. He was a former advisor to UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and was a "special advisor to Thatcher's Downing Street policy unit" in the 1980s.

Monckton's first claim to fame was his creation of the "eternity puzzle," a board game that Monckton believed was so challenging that he offered 1 million euros to the first person to solve it. To his surprise, the eternity puzzle was solved in 16 months.

While Monckton's educational background is in journalism, he has recently been credited by many think tanks as an expert in the field of global warming. [2]

For example, his profile on the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) states: [3]

"His [Monckton's] contribution to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 - the correction of a table inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise - earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate. His Nobel prize pin, made of gold recovered from a physics experiment, was presented to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA."

Monckton later conceded that claiming to be a Nobel Peace Laureate was "a joke, a joke" and "never meant to be taken seriously." But the above claim remains on the SPPI website to this day (as of Oct, 2011).

Affiliations •The Heartland Institute — "Global Warming expert" and regular speaker at the Institute's International Conference on Climate Change. •Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) — "Chief Policy Advisor" •Senator James Inhofe — Monckton is on Senator Inhofe's list of "prominent climate scientists." He is one of 70 with no background in climate science. •United Kingdom Independence Party — Past deputy head (according to SourceWatch) and currently UKIP Scotland Leader and Head of Policy Unit." •Margaret Thatcher — "Chief Policy Advisor"

Christopher Monckton worked for the British government between 1982-1986, and has previously claimed to be a "chief policy advisor" to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

Christopher Monckton has been quoted as saying "I gave her advice on science as well as other policy from 1982-1986, two years before the IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was founded", that he was "the only one who knew any science" and that "it was I who – on the prime minister's behalf – kept a weather eye on the official science advisers to the government, from the chief scientific adviser downward." He has also said that he "advised Margaret Thatcher, FRS, on scientific scams and scares." [5]

Bob Ward at The Guardian investigated these claims and found them to be false. Interestingly, in Margaret Thatcher's autobiography, she makes no mention of Monckton's role as policy advisor. When she describes the issue of climate change, she refers only to "George Guise, who advised me on science in the policy unit." [18]

Monckton had also claimed to have brought in "the first computer they had ever seen in Downing Street," but Ward noted "that this novel and important innovation by Viscount Monckton was not recognized by the current minister for science and universities, David Willetts, who was also a member of the prime minister's policy unit between 1984 and 1986."

These are just some of the lowlights of Moncton's denialism, he is an inumerate charlatan who continuouslly misrepresents himself and his accomplishments. He should be given no credence whatsoever.

So wait, what you're now saying is that global warming is real, but it would cost us less to just adapt? You need to make up your mind, your arguments are all over the place. This quote just makes me laugh, "If we can successfully help the general public to understand the futility of 'stopping' climate change and the relative value of adapting, then we can stop wasting money on useless schemes and start putting our money where it will ACTUALLY make a difference." yes, of course, let's put our money in their hands, where it will make quite the difference in their wallets. This is just embarrassing.

For the rest of the world, capitalism is not working: A billion live on less than two dollars a day. With global population exploding to 10 billion by 2050, that inequality gap will grow, fueling revolutions, wars, adding more billionaires and more folks surviving on two bucks a day.

Over the years we've explored the reasons capitalism blindly continues on its self-destructive path. Recently we found someone who brilliantly explains why free-market capitalism is destined to destroy the world, absent a historic paradigm shift: That is Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel, author of the new best-seller, "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets, and his earlier classic, "Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?"

Without being fully aware of the shift, Americans have drifted from having a market economy to becoming a market society ... where almost everything is up for sale ... a way of life where market values seep into almost every sphere of life and sometimes crowd out or corrode important values, non-market values."

President Barack Obama is in Mexico today, meeting with that country’s leader Enrique Peña Nieto. They’ll be talking immigration, border security and trade. But analysts say their conversation will likely turn to one touchy topic: Oil and gas reserves in Mexico. Twenty years after the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico’s oil reserves have remained closed to U.S. investment, but that may soon be changing.

..............Arturo Sarukhán, who was Mexican ambassador to the U.S. until January, said he expects Mexico to introduce oil and gas reforms in July or August this year. ”This is a big strategic game changer,” said Sarukhán, who is now the chairman of Global Solutions, a consultancy within the Podesta Company.

He said those joint ventures could change the oil and gas game globally. ”By bringing Mexico’s energy assets to the table, overnight Canada, Mexico and the United States become the largest producer of oil on the face of the earth, far outstripping Saudi Arabia,” he said.

That should ensure that oil and gas keep flowing for years to come.........................

Just what we need. /sarcasm off

The only thing we should use oil for is to fight our wars and voltage control...

President Barack Obama is in Mexico today, meeting with that country’s leader Enrique Peña Nieto. They’ll be talking immigration, border security and trade. But analysts say their conversation will likely turn to one touchy topic: Oil and gas reserves in Mexico. Twenty years after the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico’s oil reserves have remained closed to U.S. investment, but that may soon be changing.

..............Arturo Sarukhán, who was Mexican ambassador to the U.S. until January, said he expects Mexico to introduce oil and gas reforms in July or August this year. ”This is a big strategic game changer,” said Sarukhán, who is now the chairman of Global Solutions, a consultancy within the Podesta Company.

He said those joint ventures could change the oil and gas game globally. ”By bringing Mexico’s energy assets to the table, overnight Canada, Mexico and the United States become the largest producer of oil on the face of the earth, far outstripping Saudi Arabia,” he said.

That should ensure that oil and gas keep flowing for years to come.........................

Quoting FLwolverine:Take it easy, CB, or some mod will accuse you of monomania. From the discussion above, you should realize that the first step in any meaningful solution is political. If I knew how to do something useful about that, I would tell you.

We are doomed if we have to wait on politics to prevent the ice from melting it would take a few millennia we are out of time now. So lets hear solutions now...

Quoting cyclonebuster:The death spiral continues unabated..We need to get rid of the extra trapped energy in our atmosphere and quick... How we going to do it? I want solutions......

Take it easy, CB, or some mod will accuse you of monomania. From the discussion above, you should realize that the first step in any meaningful solution is political. If I knew how to do something useful about that, I would tell you.

For years, economists have posited that prosperity requires growth, with environmental damage as the regrettable but unavoidable consequence. A growing number of critics are now challenging this equation, though, calling for a radical revamping of the economic system.

And true is this ;-) ...And when consumers lose their taste for new things, Jackson argues, our system has plenty of shrewd advertisers, marketers and investors to persuade us "to spend money we don't have on things that we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about." ...

Presidential science advisor John Holdren is fond of saying that there are only three possible responses to climate change: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. We'll prevent what we can, adjust to what we can't prevent, and suffer through what we can't adjust to. All that remains is to determine the proportions.

Lots of people are averse to large-scale suffering. But lots of people are also averse to substantial mitigation measures. This leaves them placing a great deal of faith in adaptation. Just based on conversations I've had over the years, I think there are lots of people who are vaguely aware of climate change, convinced that something is really happening, but who have a kind of free-floating confidence in human beings' ability to adjust to circumstances. Adjusting is what we do - humans live in just about every kind of microclimate the planet offers, after all. If climate zones shift or move around, we'll get used to it. Why break the bank trying to prevent something that we can just learn to live with?

Now, on the merits, this is crazy. Our best understanding is that preventing (mitigating) a degree of global temperature rise is much, much cheaper than adapting to it.

To avoid 2 degrees of climate change, global carbon emissions will need to be reduced by at least 50% by 2050. For developed countries such as Australia with higher carbon emissions this will mean cuts closer to 80%: it essentially implies decarbonising the stationary energy sector in Australia. Several studies have now tackled the question of how to achieve this, and despite different approaches and different assumptions they’ve come up with rather similar results.

The cost of changing

Current wholesale electrical energy costs are around $60 per megawatt hour (MWh).

Previous studies from Beyond Zero Emissions and the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets at UNSW report a range of between $100 and $173/MWh, depending on a range of technology-cost assumptions.

This week the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) released their draft 100% Renewables Report, costing the system at between $111 and $133/MWh across four scenarios with different timelines and cost projections.

Each of the above studies has its own drawbacks and none can claim to be all-inclusive, but they all cost their 100% renewable systems at between $100 and $170/MWh. Current wholesale prices are around $60/MWh so this represents an increase of between $40 and $110/MWh.

For retail customers this is the same as an increase of between 4 and 11c/kWh. As most customers currently pay around 25c/kWh this would be an increase of roughly 16 to 45%, a modest number when we consider that retail energy prices have gone up by around 30% since 2008, due mainly to increased transmission and distribution costs.

There are two ways of presenting this result. First that the cost of producing energy will increase by up to a factor of 3. Or second that the increase is in line with the recent increases, which while unpleasant did not result in the end of the world for most of us.

How did they come up with that price?

The AEMO 100% Renewables Report identified the cheapest combination of technologies and locations needed to meet demand while taking into account transmission costs for linking it all together.

AEMO considered a broader range of technologies than the other studies and only outright rejects off-shore wind as too expensive compared to the alternatives. On-shore wind, solar photovoltaics and concentrating solar power with storage are all significant contributors, but wave power, hydro, biomass and biogas also play important roles.

Most interestingly the study comes out in favour of significant amounts of geothermal power), at least in the scenario with large and rapid global uptake of renewable technologies (and therefore larger decreases in costs). The previous studies only considered technologies that are already commercially available somewhere in the world; hot sedimentary aquifer technology is still very much in the developmental stage.This means there is large uncertainty on the future costs and whether or not this is truly a viable option.

But regardless of the uncertainty, the benefits of geothermal energy are significant – a zero emissions electricity source that can provide base load power. For this reason, despite the relatively high cost, the AEMO model finds cost worth the benefit of being able to manage additional variable renewables on the grid.

Another key factor in the AEMO study is that it includes demand-side participation, where users of electricity have some incentive to shift their use to different times of the day to better suit when power is available. The model estimates that 10% of electrical energy use is flexible and can be shifted to other times of the day.

Figure 2 shows a shift of the peak demand from the late afternoon to the middle of the day, coinciding with the peak in rooftop solar output. This would mean that what we currently think of as off-peak would occur in the middle of the day rather than overnight. Using power overnight would in fact be discouraged by time of use pricing.

There are of course a range of caveats that come with the study. Increases in the cost of distribution resulting from lots of rooftop solar are not included. Nor are the costs of acquiring the land required. Also, importantly it assumes all the generation is built in the future when costs have come down rather than gradually from now which would incur larger costs.

There is still much work to be done to refine the modeling work. As I discussed in another Conversation piece, the study doesn’t do everything. It doesn’t do the transition from the current infrastructure and it doesn’t consider the likely scenario that some fossil fuel will persist, especially if carbon capture and storage becomes viable.

But one message is clear – going to a very high penetration of renewables is certainly not technically impossible, and will not be as expensive as we may have thought.

Nearly half of 25,450 oil and gas wells evaluated in U.S. are in water basins with high and extremely high water stress; industry’s future growth depends on accelerating solutions such as more water recycling, better water management planning.

"A new Ceres research paper on water use in hydraulic fracturing operations shows that a significant portion of this activity is happening in water stressed regions of the United States, most prominently Texas and Colorado, which are both in the midst of prolonged drought conditions. It concludes that industry efforts underway, such as expanded use of recycled water and non-freshwater resources, need to be scaled up along with better water management planning if shale energy production is to grow as projected.

The report, announced today, is based on well drilling and water use data from FracFocus.org and water stress indicator maps developed by the World Resources Institute (WRI). The research shows that nearly 47 percent of the wells were developed in water basins with high or extremely high water stress. The research was based on FracFocus data collected on 25,450 wells in operation from January 2011 through September 2012.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a climate skeptic who somehow became chair of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, wants Congress to meddle in decisions about which science research efforts should get government funding.

Perhaps that’s because scientists have a scary track record of finding out bothersome stuff. Like about climate change and whatnot.

I doubt it'll be ice free 2 years hence. I even doubt 2013 will beat last year's minimum area record, since 2012 beat the previous record by some margin. I could be wrong, though. We'll see.

Even when the Arctic Ocean is ice free in summer, there will still be vestiges of sea ice attached to northern Greenland. These vestiges could be quite persistent. The deniers will use this to assert that the Arctic Ocean isn't ice free.

First it was supposed to be ice free by 2100, then it was 2050,then it was 2030,then it was 2020 and now it is 2015 and some say this year... Looks like we missed the boat on a solution folks. But let me know when you want it back within five years......

I doubt it'll be ice free 2 years hence. I even doubt 2013 will beat last year's minimum area record, since 2012 beat the previous record by some margin. I could be wrong, though. We'll see.

Even when the Arctic Ocean is ice free in summer, there will still be vestiges of sea ice attached to northern Greenland. These vestiges could be quite persistent. The deniers will use this to assert that the Arctic Ocean isn't ice free.